One Response to A Campaign of Hate, Fear, and Falsehoods

In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” roundtable discussion, well-known political commentator, Andrew Sullivan, stated: “If Virginia and Florida go back to the Republicans, it’s the confederacy, entirely. If you put the map of the civil war over this Electoral College map, you’ve got the civil war.”

I will not speculate regarding Mr. Sullivan’s intentions, but such claims redirect attention from important political developments to irrelevant coincidences with implicit racial motivation.

What Andrew Sullivan seems to ignore is the tremendous drop in support the president has sustained since his monumental 2008 victory. The fact is the President’s support, according to RealClearPolitics averages, in key swing states over the past 4 years has dropped over 9 points; these states include Michigan, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nevada, none of which were confederate states.

My question to Mr. Sullivan and anyone who accepts his remarks: is it more likely these one-time supporters suddenly became racist or is it possible they have stayed engaged and demand a different approach? And should the latter be the case, should not comments like Sullivan’s be seen as divisive racial dogma relying upon an unsurprising and circumstantial premise?